


Remaining Human

by awomannotagirl



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, porn with an unnecessary amount of plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:18:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6023320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awomannotagirl/pseuds/awomannotagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey wants to put her arms around her and tell her everything will be all right, but she senses that Phasma won’t take that well, and besides, it might be a lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escaping

**Author's Note:**

> I know there is an entire, detailed Star Wars universe out there and this probably conflicts with it, but all I've ever seen is the movies, so all backstory here is headcanon.

The First Order doesn’t want kindness and gentleness. Of course not. Footsoldiers are required to do cruel things—necessary things, they’re often reminded, but cruel. The Order doesn’t want sadists either. Sadists put their own impulses ahead of the army’s goals; they’re not controllable and they’re not predictable, either of which is a disqualification. The First Order, like any army, requires soldiers who take orders, ask no questions, demonstrate total loyalty.  
  
They are very, very good at creating those soldiers. Loyalty is the easiest thing. It’s ensured by beginning with young children, three and four years old, who grow up knowing nothing but the First Order, nothing but serial numbers and squadrons. Future stormtroopers are taken from their families before human brains are capable of forming permanent memories. The Order is a fearsome and distant parent, but it is a parent, and there are no others; children will love even a brutal caretaker if that is all they have.  
  
Regimented days, hard work, a total lack of privacy, constant white noise—that takes care of questions, for the most part. Frequent reassignment prevents the development of bonds that might rival that of soldier to army. Education is compulsory, unrelenting, and doctrinaire. Knowledge of the unblinking surveillance they live under and the occasional, spectacular demonstration of the consequences of disobedience take care of everything else.  
  
They remain human despite all this. 

  


  


Phasma—this is her third appellation since joining the service of the First Order, and the first that could be considered a name—is a good soldier. One of the best: fierce, smart, inventive without being insubordinate. She is deadly with a weapon, deadlier without, dedicated to her own performance and that of her troops. She is a star cadet, quickly made a squadron leader, then sergeant, lieutenant, captain. She is transferred from good assignments to better ones. Before she’s thirty she’s _the_ captain, leading the infantry in the most prestigious posting in the Order: Starkiller Base.  
  
She allows no show of emotion. She presents as the perfect cog in an unfailing machine. None of the officers above her or the stormtroopers below can imagine her as anything but a stony, unforgiving monolith of calculation and execution.  
  
She is aware of what they see; it’s what she wants them to see. If anyone were able to lift the armor she wears and examine her true self, she knows she would be excommunicated in an eyeblink from the only life she knows, because in fact she feels no loyalty to the First Order at all. She knows exactly what has been done to her, and she hates it. She knows that humanity has been stolen from her, but that theft has left her with a deep longing for things she cannot ever, ever let herself have.  
  
It should be impossible, but Phasma has indistinct but unmistakable images in her head from a time before. They are brief and nonlinear but real, and they are hers. A stone walk in the buttery light and blue shadow of late afternoon. A voice, a clear tenor, singing a line from a song in an adjoining room. A dim room and warm, strong arms holding her, an impossibly small her, and rocking, rocking. A bright day framed in an open window. It is not easy to retain these memories, not with the light and noise and crowdedness and exhaustion, but she does. She visits these moments before she sleeps and she stores them up against ... something.  
  
She is a good soldier, but she is merely a soldier. She has a job, and she keeps doing her job because she has yet to be presented with a better one. The isolation, the indoctrination, the total dependance that were designed to make her a fanatic have not done so. She owes that, she thinks, to the clear tenor voice and the warm arms in the dim room.

  


  


Even the paranoid First Order understands that its soldiers are human, and to prevent them from becoming psychologically nonfunctional they have to be allowed to interact with each other. They have games and sports, bars, carefully curated libraries, entertainments, semiprivate release rooms where they can satisfy their physical needs, alone or with partners. A soldier is expected to make use of all of these distractions with some regularity.  
  
Still, forming a lasting attachment to another person cannot be done in the service of the First Order. Troopers are transferred from squad to squad with dizzying frequency to prevent exactly these feelings. The only thing there is to love is the Order itself, the Supreme Leader, and that she can’t bring herself to do.  
  
She instead does what everyone else does, though the thin and shallow pleasures only make her hungry. She plays ball sports, which she’s quite good at, on ever-rotating teams; the camaraderie is nourishing even though it doesn’t extend past a few games. She drinks to mild intoxication in the canteens. She takes partners to the release rooms, men at first because that seems to be what’s expected, and when that isn’t very pleasurable she takes women. Women come closer to filling the secret well of want that she is trying to pretend she doesn’t have, and are therefore more satisfying and infinitely more dangerous.  
  
Once—remarkably, miraculously, only once—she almost falls into that well. She chances into a training partner who makes her laugh, and impulsively (Phasma never does anything impulsively) she asks the woman to join her. _I’m headed to the release rooms after this. Come with me?_ It immediately feels like too much, because she is so unaccountably happy when the woman grins and nods. A sweat-soaked hour or so later she opens her eyes, gasping, and finds the other woman’s eyes burning into her, fingers buried inside her and an expression of ... what? _Yearning,_ the word would be, if either of them knew how to apply it. Phasma comes for her, her breath stopped in the grip of the most powerful orgasm she’s ever felt, her vision full of warm brown eyes fixed on hers. As her climax slowly loses its lock on her, she feels tears prickling to her eyes, rolling out of the corners and down her temples. There, among the impersonal implements and the wet slap of skin on skin from other rooms, in a place where the most intimate of acts is deliberately made quotidian, she finally feels it. She feels filled and whole.  
  
For the first time, she looks for another individual in the crowds. The excited hope she experiences starts fading when she can’t find her. After a few days, she checks the woman’s serial number—something else she’d never done—and finds that she’s been transferred away. It’s no surprise. It’s only a surprise that it hurts.  
  
Not long after, her elevation to command gives her an excuse to create even more distance between herself and others. She goes to the release rooms alone, when she goes, and her new officer’s access lets her lock the doors.

  


  


When she is presented with the opportunity to martyr herself for the First Order, she puts up token resistance for the benefit of whatever surveillance she’s under, and then she rolls over. She takes down the shields. _Go ahead,_ she thinks. _About time. Make it count._  
  
Alone in the dark of the trash compactor, she has quite a while to meditate. She’s not actually in danger; there are proximity sensors in her armor that prevent her from being crushed by the compactor, and the hydraulic assist from the suit will let her climb out when she wants, but she is in no hurry. It’s cold and the interior vid screen of her helmet shorts out, but she hasn’t had this much silence and privacy for a long time.  
  
_Goddamn FN-2187,_ she thinks, without much malice. Apparently he had not noticed that she had been protecting him and his softheaded behavior as long as he’d been under her command; well, he hadn’t been intended to notice, but he should have been aware that not firing a weapon in a combat situation would have gotten him instantly court-martialed, possibly executed, anywhere else. At least his childish vengeance has left her in position to escape—to escape not only the sewage system but Starkiller Base and the First Order itself.  
  
She has to, now. That’s clear enough. Assuming FN-2187 and his bumbling Resistance buddies are not successful in whatever grandiose scheme they have—and they almost certainly will fail—some inquisitor will eventually examine her helmet logs and the surveillance records of the shield command room, and her acquiescence to the feeble threats offered by her “captors” will be noted. She works through several options, considering and discarding until she is relatively confident that she has a plan that will leave her either free or dead.  
  
Almost at that moment, she hears an unsettling rumble. Hears it, or feels it—it vibrates unpleasantly in her teeth, her skull, her spine. Whatever it is, it’s bad, and it’s time to move.  
  
She clambers out of the chute she’d let them shove her into and finds a scene of unprecedented chaos at the top. She gives a moment of grudging respect to the Resistance, but only a moment, because she has a lot to do and, from the look and feel of things, not much time.  
  
Stormtroopers run in broken panic; alarms blare, and the underlying rumble intensifies. Phasma walks as calmly as she can to the nearest equipment room, where she strips off and dumps her precious but much too conspicuous chromium armor. She grabs an ordinary white suit, the best disguise she could hope for.  
  
She notes with approval that some of her troopers and a few of the officers are keeping their heads and directing a semi-orderly evacuation effort. It’s not hard to make her way onto an escaping troopship. She settles in among the ranks of soldiers in the belly of the ship, almost unable to believe her luck; she had thought this would be the difficult part, but the usual regimentation has broken down and a trooper without a squadron is, incredibly, not noticeable. She grimaces at the lurching takeoff but is grateful for the pilot’s haste moments later, when she feels a shockwave. Whatever the hell those idiots did, it worked. The Starkiller, she is fairly sure, is no more.

  


  


A day later—two days? it’s hard to know how time is passing with neither planetary rotation nor a comforting stream of telemetry to judge by—she is walking down a crowded, dusty street on a world she doesn’t recognize, having dumped the armor and ducked away the first time the troopship had landed for fuel and supplies. She never logged onto the army’s net through the stolen helmet. The possibility, remote though she judges it to be, that someone could have put an alert into the system was enough to keep her out of the net entirely, though she would dearly have loved to arm herself with some basic information for her future. As it is, she doesn’t know where she is, where she might get away to, or even what language she ought to be listening for.  
  
So she walks, forcing herself to stroll at a pace comparable to that of the civilians around her though she wants desperately to sprint. She knows, intellectually, that without a stormtrooper’s helmet she is virtually unrecognizable to anyone from the First Order, but that knowledge does not prevent her from feeling horribly exposed. She is conscious of her size for the first time in many years. Among stormtroopers, it gave her command; among the civilian population, it makes her conspicuous. Even nonhumans make note of a woman nearly two meters tall. She does not want to be remembered but she probably will be.  
  
She needs to sit down—to disguise her stature, to give herself some time to plan, and not least to rest. She watches, without appearing to be watching, for somewhere she can stay for a period of time without attracting attention. Finally she sees a shabby establishment that ought to be glad of the little money she can spend.  
  
It’s perfect: inside it’s shadowy but not dark, not crowded but not empty. Though the patrons are assorted shapes and hues, none of them belong to recognizably dangerous groups—that is, allied to or toady of the First Order. That in itself is significant. It’s the kind of bar she would have raided as a stormtrooper.  
  
She doesn’t relax, but she settles down. She orders a drink that she thinks she can probably metabolize, pointing and gesturing at the illustrated menu; even if she shares a language with the bartender, she doesn’t want her voice in the air. She has enough money in scrip for the drink and, later, when she’s more desperate, something to eat. Her bank accounts are obviously lost to her, and the more gray-market arrangements she’d made for just this kind of eventuality will take some time and ingenuity to access. That’s one of the things she has to think about. She has to think about where she’s going to go and how, what she will do to survive.  
  
The dancing flame of the candle on the table reminds her of an unpleasant but necessary chore she has to perform. She sighs; it might as well be now. Palming the candle, she goes to the restroom and locks the door behind her. It’s unusually spacious, perhaps because of the widely variable physiologies of the patrons, though it’s as fetid as any other.  
  
She sets the candle on a shelf and places the small, sharp knife she had taken from her armor into the flame. It won’t get red-hot, but a little heat will be better than nothing. Then she tears a strip from the bottom of the loose shirt she’s wearing. It’s a sparring garment that she took from the equipment room, but she’s trusting no one in this polyglot town will know or care. She rinses the strip in water as hot as she can get it. That won’t actually prevent infection, but it makes her feel a little better.  
  
First she reaches up to the base of her skull between the cords of neck muscle and finds the tiny, thin interface chip there. They’re delicate, these chips; she’s had to have hers replaced half a dozen times. She presses on it hard with her middle finger and feels it crumple. Then she places her left thumb on the side of the washbasin and picks up the knife. She balances the blade just below the thumbnail and readies herself, trying to empty her mind of the knowledge of what she is about to do.  
  
“You don’t have to take off the whole thumb,” a voice says behind her.  
  
Phasma whirls, the knife out and up. Standing behind her is a young woman, a small young woman, who ought to be intimidated and should not have been able to enter the locked washroom without Phasma’s hearing her. She blinks calmly.  
  
“Who are you,” Phasma growls, “and how did you get in here?”  
  
“I’m Rey,” the woman—really, the girl—answers. “I came in through the door, just like you did. Well,” she amends, with a slight smile, “not _just_ like you did.”  
  
Phasma shakes her head slowly. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I’ve been following you since you left the troopship.”  
  
“That’s not possible.”  
  
Rey shrugs slightly.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Now Rey smiles more widely. “You just defected from the First Order. You were the infantry captain on Starkiller Base, one of the three most powerful people on that planet, and you let three underarmed rebels _force_ you to disable the base’s shields.” She steps forward into the light of the candle, and Phasma stiffens, keeping the knife between them. “I could feel your ambivalence there on Starkiller even before I knew who you were. You are very interesting to me.” She adds quickly, like a correction, “To us.”  
  
Suddenly Phasma knows her. “You’re the girl who escaped from Kylo Ren,” she says. She doesn’t let her guard down—the enemy of her enemy is not necessarily her friend—but at least events are beginning to make some sense.  
  
“You should come with me,” Rey says.  
  
Phasma laughs. “What? Why?”  
  
“Because you don’t have anywhere else to go,” Rey says, and Phasma stops laughing. “You don’t know how to live outside the First Order, you’ve made an enemy of the most powerful organization in the galaxy, and you don’t have any idea what to do next. Besides,” she adds, “you want to.”  
  
Rey’s right. She does want to go with her. She knows that the impulse is at least half born of fear and loneliness and the relief of making a human connection; for the sake of safety she ought to get far away from the Resistance and anyone who has anything to do with it. That doesn’t change what she feels, though.  
  
“Our medic can take that chip out of your thumb,” Rey says, nodding at Phasma’s hand. “If you cut it off, you get rid of the chip but you’ve marked yourself for life.”  
  
It’s a reasonable point; the missing thumb is a cliche of Resistance melodrama, the sign of a renegade ex-stormtrooper. Phasma doesn’t really expect to live long enough for a recognizable mutilation to be much of a factor, but it gives her a weird spark of hope, to think about planning beyond the next few days.  
  
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll go.”  
  
Rey is caught, dumbfounded, in the middle of formulating her next argument. “Oh.”

  


  


Half an hour later they’re on the _Millennium Falcon_. The freaking _Millennium Falcon_. The archetype of everything the First Order is not. If Phasma were able to find humor in any of this, she would be guffawing at the idea of herself on board the _Millennium Falcon_.  
  
They are off the planet’s surface before she’s fully buckled in. Rey and her Wookiee copilot fly their ship with careless-looking bravado, apparently improvising, hitting hyperspace much too low in orbit just as the control tower begins to squawk a warning.  
  
“We’ve got a few things to do before we head back to base,” Rey says to her. “We’ll be hanging in orbit around a gas giant for a day or so, cloaking our heat signature in the planet’s radiation, and waiting for a courier. Then we have to make a delivery.”  
  
Phasma is grateful for this little time before she has to meet the Resistance she’s almost carelessly thrown herself in with. She suspects Rey has invented the need for a day’s rest in orbit, but she doesn’t mind the subterfuge.  
  
Rey is looking at her with an expression she doesn’t recognize. “You’re exhausted,” the young woman says, and Phasma realizes she’s concerned. “You should go get some sleep.”  
  
Phasma doesn’t argue. Part of her wants to resist just to be contrary, to maintain a safely adversarial attitude toward Rey, but she is exhausted, and she does have to sleep. The last time she was able to close her eyes, she had been sitting up in the crowded troopship, and she can’t really claim it had been restful.  
  
Rey shows her a bunk, which is unexpectedly large and comfortable. That’s the advantage of using a smuggler’s ship, Phasma thinks; outlaws get to please themselves. She crawls in and buries herself in the blankets, and she does not think anything for very long.

  


  


Rey comes in once the ship is safely in orbit around her chosen remote planet. Phasma is correct: they haven’t returned to D’Qar not because of Rey’s additional errands, but because she wants to let Phasma adjust and heal. She also wants to be private for a time with her, an impulse she doesn’t fully understand but that she trusts.  
  
She sits on the edge of the bunk. Phasma is sleeping and some—not all—of the fierceness has smoothed out of her face. Rey studies her in the low light, learning her. She had been surprised by Phasma when she entered the washroom; she isn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t a broadshouldered blonde giant with an open face trying to keep itself closed and pale, haunted eyes. From the way Finn talked about her, Rey had vaguely imagined Phasma to be all sharp edges and smooth surfaces. This woman is both blunt and rough, handsome rather than beautiful (but very handsome, distractingly handsome), and—Rey can feel it without any probing—holding a brittle mantle protectively around a soft center of hurt.  
  
In the hours she spent shackled in Kylo Ren’s prison, Rey had felt her consciousness burst and expand, and she learned abruptly to see the spark-shower of lives eddying everywhere around her. Most of them had been shadowed and fitful—tiny fireflies—but a few had burned intensely, and one of those had been this woman. She had known the heat and taste of her long before she had ever seen her. That, not the needs of the Resistance, had drawn her to that obscure outpost when she had felt Phasma’s escape.  
  
She leans forward, watching Phasma’s breath, looking at her pale lashes, the scars on her lip. She wonders what Phasma’s given name had been, those years and years ago when she was born to parents who must have loved her above all things. How she must have cried when she was ripped from them. How they must have suffered and how they must suffer still, if they are alive. Finn has told her that he has no memories of his birth family, that thinking of them is only an abstract pain, but Rey knows, without knowing how she does, this is not true of Phasma.  
  
She strips down to underclothes, making a note to wash her shirt and pants as soon as she can, and she crawls in next to Phasma.  
  
Phasma wakes instantly and half rises. “What’s happening?”  
  
“I’m going to sleep,” Rey says.  
  
There is a pause, and Phasma stays up, braced on an elbow. “Is this the only bunk?” she asks at last.  
  
“The other one smells like Wookiee,” Rey says, pulling blankets around her. That’s not why she’s climbed in with Phasma—Chewie smells quite pleasant when he’s dry—but she feels no need to share that. She knows she’s pushing; she thinks Phasma probably needs to be pushed.  
  
Phasma slowly settles back down, but she is holding herself still and rigid. Rey wants to put her arms around her and tell her everything will be all right, but she senses that Phasma won’t take that well, and besides, it might be a lie.

  


  


Phasma does eventually relax, a little, but she does not go back to sleep. She can feel the woman lying next to her as if she were on fire. She has never slept in such close proximity to another person. It feels dangerous. It is the most intimate thing she has ever done; her infrequent liaisons with the bodies of others have never had the intertwined quality of sharing sleep.  
  
She feels Rey’s breathing even and slow, and she knows that Rey is asleep. She doesn’t know quite what to do with this, the enormous trust that Rey is placing in her. She could put her knife into Rey’s chest with a few economical movements. She could crush her windpipe, snap her neck. She probably should.  
  
Rey curls into her and throws an arm over Phasma’s chest, and what Phasma does is pull her close. She ducks her head to smell Rey’s hair and finds her lips brushing Rey’s forehead. She does not quite kiss her.  
  
For no real reason she can discern, this stranger has saved her life. A stranger she mysteriously, without evidence or history, trusts. She knows that this girl is powerful with the Force, and that she could be being manipulated, but she doesn’t think she is. Kylo Ren has manipulated her with the Force when he was too impatient to explain what he wanted, or when his illogical orders made her balk. She knows what it feels like. What this feels like—it feels like looking at a stone walk in the late afternoon. Like a pair of brown eyes, desperate and focused, that she has not let herself remember for so long.  
  
She lies awake, listening to Rey breathe, feeling her warm and living against her, for a long, long time. Something is breaking apart in her chest. Something is unfurling, pressing up and out and filling her with things she can’t identify or express.  
  
Rey shifts and sighs, and Phasma turns too, and she finds that their foreheads have met and their lips are only notionally apart. This is not what she intended. She does not know what she intended. She can feel Rey’s breath on her lips. Rey moves her head slightly, sliding her forehead along Phasma’s, and then their noses touch. It shouldn’t be sexy, but it is, and Phasma is pretty sure Rey is no longer asleep.  
  
She is so young, Phasma thinks. Young and beautiful and probably innocent, and almost surely not accustomed to easy, meaningless coupling. How could she know what she wants? How could she, Phasma, even contemplate touching someone so perfect?  
  
Rey lifts her chin and her mouth meets Phasma’s, and this is what she has wanted since she knew that she could want. It’s warm and wet and Rey is most definitely awake now, her lips taking possession, licking and sucking and kissing, and there are noises from throats but it isn’t clear whose and it doesn’t matter.  
  
Now there are teeth on Phasma’s neck, and she gasps, and returns the favor with a bite to a bare shoulder. She remembers that she has hands.  
  
Rey is saying something in a language Phasma doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t need to understand; she feels Rey pulling at her shirt and she lets it go, and then she slides her hands under Rey’s thin top, pushing it up over her shoulders, pulling it off her arms, throwing it somewhere; then she has Rey’s bare skin under her hands and mouth, and she takes everything she is given. She uses her fingertips but also her cheek, her lips, her nose, her forearms to touch Rey everywhere she possibly can. She can hear Rey’s hoarse noises and she knows that it’s right, completely right.  
  
She slides down and takes Rey’s nipple gently between her lips. She hears a sigh and her mouth curls in a smile. She traps the stiffening flesh between her tongue and her teeth, bringing her hand up to touch the other breast and roll its nipple in her fingers. Now there is a whimper from above, and she feels Rey’s hands on the back of her head, holding her close. She also feels Rey’s hips begin to move, just a bit, pressing her pubic bone into Phasma’s belly; a moment later Rey’s leg comes up and over her hip, sliding behind her and pulling her in to her.  
  
Phasma trails her hand around Rey’s ribcage and spreads her fingers wide over the smaller woman’s back. She holds her even closer, her mouth still busy with Rey’s nipple, but less and less gentle all the time. “Oh,” she hears Rey breathe, then feels Rey’s hand at her lips—stopping her? No, moving her to the other side. She takes this nipple in, sucking, flicking with her tongue, scraping with her teeth. Rey’s hips are moving with greater fierceness. She finds a position with her cunt against Phasma’s hip, and she moans into Phasma’s hair.  
  
Phasma moves her hand down to Rey’s ass to push Rey harder into her hip. The moan gets louder and catches in Rey’s throat with a kind of sob. “Please, oh please,” she says, and Phasma doesn’t ask _please what?_ because she knows what she wants to give. She pushes herself up above Rey and pulls her onto her back, kneeling between her legs, and with a hand under either of Rey’s knees opens her legs. She can smell how wet Rey is, and she laughs with both joy and disbelief. She puts her fingers into the waistband of Rey’s last remaining garment and remembers to ask, “All right?” Rey mouths “Yes, yes,” and Phasma pulls her underpants off, with some fumbling and kicking, and Rey is spread gloriously, beautifully naked in front of her. There is just enough light that Phasma can see her glistening; she is raising her hips, wanting, wanting.  
  
Phasma draws one finger down her belly, through the wiry hair, and to her cunt. She barely touches clit and inner lips and Rey writhes and cries out. Phasma covers her vulva with her fingers, cupping her, feeling the heat and damp and letting Rey thrust her hips against the pressure of her hand. “Please, please,” Rey says, incoherent, and Phasma can’t control the smile that breaks over her face as she teases open Rey’s lips and touches her oh so gently with two fingertips, right at the entrance of her body.  
  
Rey grabs Phasma’s shoulders, thrusts up her hips, and makes a pleading, whining sound. “Do you want me inside you?” Phasma whispers.  
  
“Yes,” Rey almost screams. And Phasma thrusts into her, middle and ring fingers pushing deep inside and then holding there, riding with Rey’s desperate hip rolls.  
  
“More,” Rey demands. “And move. Move.” Phasma laughs and complies, pulling out enough to add a third finger and starting to fuck gently and shallowly when she pushes back in.  
  
Rey groans and clenches her fists against Phasma’s shoulders. “Harder,” she says urgently. “Harder.”  
  
Phasma remembers her concern about Rey’s being so young, so innocent. She laughs again, and she begins pumping deep into Rey, using more of the substantial strength in her big hands.  
  
“Oh yes,” Rey breathes. “Do that forever.”  
  
There is nothing Phasma wants more. She draws her fingers along Rey’s sensitive front wall as she fucks her and fucks her. Rey is slick and swollen and grinds back into Phasma’s hand as she thrusts forward. Phasma fucks Rey fast, the wet sound of her pistoning fingers like galloping music; then, when she senses Rey is almost in pain, she slows to deep, rhythmic lunges, drawing almost all the way out, pushing hard all the way back in.  
  
Rey brings her own hand down to where Phasma works in and out of her. She touches Phasma’s fingers and she grunts under her breath with every stroke. After a little time she whispers, “Can you ... faster, please. Not like at first but ...” Phasma picks up her pace but keeps it steady, regular, sensing what Rey wants from the way she rocks her body back and forth with her heels.  
  
After another indeterminate time, Phasma can feel Rey getting close. When she touches Phasma’s face and looks into her eyes, Phasma is happier than she’s been in her memory. “Is it okay if ... can I ...” Rey isn’t clear with her words, but she’s moving her fingers onto her own clit, and Phasma nods. Rey’s eyes flutter as she makes broad circles over her clit, and together they bring her up and up, her thighs clutching tighter and tighter, until with a cry Rey clenches Phasma’s fingers with her cunt, seizes her wrist and holds her deep with one hand, and stutters over her clit with the other. She pants, pulses, slowly relaxes, but she doesn’t let go of Phasma’s wrist. “Stay inside me,” she says hoarsely. “I might need a little more.”  
  
Phasma, still kneeling with her weight pushing her fingers into Rey, forehead settled onto Rey’s belly, reaches up to stroke her hair and her face with her free hand. “Anything,” she says. “Anything.”  
  
They rest like that for a few moments; then Rey stirs, clutching Phasma’s fingers inside, and murmurs, “Just a little, please.” Phasma moves gently, and Rey shudders and shudders and finally says, “All right. All right. That’s it,” and tugs at her wrist until she draws slowly out. Rey shudders again and gasps as Phasma leaves her, and then she grabs her shoulders and pulls her up to lie next to her.  
  
Phasma carefully, tentatively puts her arms around Rey, who is breathing shallowly and rapidly and almost sounds like she’s about to cry. “Are you all right?” Phasma asks, her voice low and, she realizes too late, shaky.  
  
Rey laughs and says, “Oh, god, yes.” She opens her eyes and smiles at Phasma, and says, “Better than all right. I’m perfect.” She touches Phasma’s lips with one finger; Phasma reflexively takes it into her mouth, grazes it with her tongue.  
  
They lie entwined together for a few minutes. Phasma drinks in the softness of Rey’s skin, her scent, the heat of her body. Every so often she finds Rey’s eyes with her own, and they lock onto each other, exchanging wordless, searching wonder, until one or the other breaks for a kiss.  
  
Finally Rey whispers, “How is it that you’re still dressed?” with a laugh in her voice, and she plucks at the tight tank Phasma had under the sparring shirt. Phasma grins, pushes her face into Rey’s neck, bites her gently.  
  
Rey pulls more insistently at Phasma’s tank, sliding it up her back, and Phasma stiffens. It’s involuntary, but Rey reads it clearly and Phasma feels a rush of guilt. “You don’t have to,” she mutters.  
  
“ _Have_ to?” Rey sounds incredulous. She strokes the strip of Phasma’s back that she has exposed. “I want to.” She slides her hands around, drags her fingers up Phasma’s muscled abdomen, and pushes the tank further up. “I need to,” she says, more softly.  
  
Phasma hesitates, struggling. “I—” she starts, but doesn’t know where she’s going. “I’ll try,” she says finally. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”  
  
She is afraid Rey will dismiss this, or laugh, or tell her that it will all be just fine. She doesn’t. She bring her hands to Phasma’s face and is quiet for a moment, stroking her cheekbones with her thumbs and looking steadily, thoughtfully, into her eyes. She says, at last, “I don’t know how you think you might disappoint me, but I won’t take anything from you that you don’t want to give. If it’s nothing more than this, that’s fine.” Her lips twitch into a small smile. “I won’t lie, I want to ravish you the way you just did me, but if that’s not all right for you, it’s not, and I won’t.”  
  
“It’s just that—” Again the words elude her. Phasma closes her eyes, escaping the distracting face in front of her, and thinks unhappily of what she is used to: tools, machines, emotionless physical sensation. “It’s never been like this for me,” she says. “It’s always been, I don’t know, anonymous. I don’t know if I’ll be able to ...” She trails off.  
  
“To come?” Phasma nods, aware that she is, weirdly, blushing. She feels Rey’s hand stroke her forehead, feels her fingers thread into her hair. Rey’s lips brush hers, and she murmurs, “That’s fine. It’s our first time. I don’t expect anything from you, I just want to feel you.”  
  
Her words break something apart that has been wound tight inside Phasma, and she is flooded. She can’t identify exactly what she’s feeling, because some of it she has never felt before. It’s relief, surely, and also gratitude, but also a warm tingle behind her sternum that is fully new; also a desperate anxiety that she doesn’t understand. She pulls in a deep, rough breath and is incredulous to find that she is crying: not just shedding tears but within moments gasping, keening, sobbing. She doesn’t cry. She hasn’t cried, not like this, since ... since when? Maybe not ever. And she’s not even sure why she’s doing it.  
  
Rey pulls her close and wraps her arms tightly around her shoulders, holding her while this unexpected storm rages. She murmurs things Phasma can’t fully hear and doesn’t need to; she hears words and broken phrases but what she absorbs is a steady acceptance and encouragement, and she does what Rey is asking her to do: She falls apart.  
  
Gradually she slows and finally stops. She thinks that she ought to feel humiliated, but she doesn’t. She feels a deep calm. Rey says, “Here, you,” and pulls off the undergarment that began it all, which is a surprise until she starts using it to wipe Phasma’s face. That manages to make Phasma smile, and then Rey grins back, and in a moment they’re both laughing.  
  
That, too, slows and stops. Rey tosses the tears-and-snot-covered shirt to the floor and puts her fingers in the waist of Phasma’s pants. “These too,” she says. “Really. We don’t have to do anything more, but I want your skin.” There is longing in the last words, and Phasma responds, untying the drawstring and wiggling out of the pants. She rolls close to Rey and they hold each other, drinking in the glorious feeling of nakedness against nakedness, settling into each other’s bodies. As they relax, Rey’s hands return to stroking Phasma’s shoulders, slowly and dreamily; Phasma tentatively draws her fingertips down Rey’s back and smiles at the sigh she elicits.  
  
She cautiously revisits the explosion of emotion that she had experienced just minutes before, examining it, trying to understand it. What was it that had detonated within her? Being imperfect? Being desired? Being seen? Certainly those were in the mix, but none feels like the ignition. She casts back, trying to remember exactly what Rey had said—and then she finds it, with a surge of the same exultation and anxiety that had overwhelmed her before.  
  
“Our first time.” _First_ implies _second_. _First_ implies—promises—that she and Rey will keep exploring each other, that they will find more of what lies between them, that this thing will grow and they will feed it. She will spend another night in this bunk with Rey, maybe many more. She will have time to learn Rey’s body, and Rey will learn hers, and they will discover new sensations they have only together.  
  
Her brain whirls, and she quiets it only by taking Rey’s mouth with hers in a fierce kiss. It’s a surprise to Rey at first, but she quickly rises to it, and for several moments there is nothing but lips and tongues, searching and driving. Then Phasma deliberately throws her leg over Rey’s hip, hooking her calf behind Rey’s knee, and pulls the smaller woman on top of her with her thigh between Phasma’s. She squeezes gently, and then rolls her pelvis, making her intention unmistakable.  
  
Rey pulls back, pushing up with her arms on either side of Phasma’s shoulders. She looks Phasma in the eyes, finding only clear blue and determination. “Are you sure?” she says.  
  
“I’m sure.”


	2. Finding

Rey doesn’t immediately move. She hovers over Phasma, barely touching her, holding herself just above Phasma’s body with half-bent arms. Phasma allows herself a flash of appreciation of how unexpectedly strong Rey is, but most of her attention is focused on Rey’s eyes. Rey is searching her, face serious; not knowing what Rey’s looking for, Phasma simply looks back. 

Whatever it is, she seems to find it. Her mouth twists into a smirk and she says, “All right, then,” and she slowly, deliberately, pushes her thigh forward. It’s just pressure—it isn’t movement, it isn’t rhythmic, it doesn’t rub slickly where Phasma is wet and swollen, but somehow it promises all of those things. Phasma moans far back in her throat, low and needy, and Rey giggles. She leans forward and catches Phasma’s earlobe in her teeth, and she says around it, “Has it been a while?”

 _It’s been never,_ Phasma thinks, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead she kisses the shoulder close to her mouth, scrapes it with her teeth, and is gratified to hear Rey’s breath catch. She rolls her hips just a little, pressing herself against the hard muscle of Rey’s thigh. 

Then Rey pushes back with her arms, pulls her leg away; Phasma has only enough time to gasp in disappointment before Rey brings her other knee in between Phasma’s legs and shoves her thighs apart. Phasma tightens for a moment, she can’t help it, she has never felt so exposed, but after only a beat she relaxes, pulls her knees up, spreads herself even more. She wants to take Rey in. She wants this. 

“Better,” Rey says, the smirk widening into a real smile. Then she pushes her legs out behind herself and lowers herself, slowly, teasingly, with those wiry arms until her belly touches the wet heat between Phasma’s spread thighs. 

That first contact with Rey’s soft flesh brings a gasp from Phasma and a sharp jerk of her hips. She has been anticipating as she lies beneath Rey, so close to Rey’s body that she can feel the heat from her skin, but Rey’s touch is still a surprise. 

She closes her eyes and lets herself loosen, open, and absorb the exquisite feeling of a naked human body against hers, the weight and pressure against her cunt. She puts her arms out to the sides, yielding, giving her skin to Rey, offering her breasts and her hips and her neck and anything, anything Rey wants to take.

Rey doesn’t hesitate. She begins to rock herself against Phasma, dipping her head to suck at her neck below her jaw, bringing a hand to cover and knead Phasma’s breast, her rough-callused palm scraping over the nipple; where their bodies press together in the cradle of Phasma’s hips, her belly slides back and forth over Phasma’s slick, swollen cunt and Phasma whimpers.

Rey is making sounds too, no more articulate than Phasma’s, as she kisses, sucks, bites everywhere she can reach—neck, chin, lips, shoulders, breasts. She is still rocking into Phasma, dragging her belly back and forth, her movements getting sharper and harder as Phasma presses her own hips up to meet the sweet weight of her. They can both hear the wet sounds of Rey’s skin slicking over Phasma; Rey pushes herself higher, harder, until with a rough shock Phasma feels coarse hair and the hardness of Rey’s pubic bone grind into her clit. It almost hurts but it also feels perfect, and Phasma grabs Rey’s hips and pulls her tighter against herself. 

“Oh Phas,” Rey whispers, and Phasma laughs; no one has ever shortened her name like that, and it’s all she wants to be called ever again. “Anything,” Rey murmurs into Phasma’s neck, “anything you want, Phas, anything, everything, please ...”

Phasma is pretty sure she ought to be the one begging, especially since her want is so huge, so specific, so immediate. There are other things she wants to feel from Rey, but there will be time for gentle later; right now she needs to be taken, to be claimed. “In me,” she says into Rey’s ear, knowing her voice is hoarse and desperate. “I need you inside me. Fuck me, Rey, please, fuck ...”

Rey shifts her body and does exactly, exactly what Phasma needs: she doesn’t tease or linger, she thrusts her fingers deep into Phasma, smiles at Phasma’s groan, pushes a third finger inside and pumps in and out, hard and fast. “Yes, oh, Rey, yes,” Phasma pants, and that is the end of her ability to form actual words for a while. 

Rey quickly rachets up to meet Phasma’s need, sensing that she can’t bear slow or tender right now. Rey uses her whole arm to get the weight of her body behind every thrust, fucking from the shoulder so that it’s as fast and as powerful as she can make it.

Every part of this—the slick friction of Rey’s fingers sliding inside her, the burn at her entrance, most of all the aching bloom at the secret center of her body every time Rey’s fingertips hit deep—is the best thing Phasma has ever felt. That isn’t because the physical sensation is new, though it is more raw and overwhelming than she can remember having experienced it before; it’s because above and behind the simple and total pleasure of hand in cunt is Rey. Rey: the smell of her skin, the sound of her breath, the pink on her cheeks beneath strands of loose hair, the focus of her eyes and attention and being. In this moment, Rey is for her alone.

She gives herself to Rey. She grips her knees and opens herself and she lets herself do nothing but feel Rey pounding into her. She takes the sharp, perfect pleasure of every thrust and lets it release short cries from the center of her belly, punches of sound she’s never heard from herself before.

She loses track of how long Rey fucks her. It’s long enough that she worries dimly that Rey might get tired, but every time she opens her mouth to tell her she can stop Rey kisses her, and the fucking keeps happening and it feels so amazing that she can’t speak.

Then Rey withdraws to her fingertips, laughing when Phasma groans in bemused outrage. “Don’t worry,” she says, stroking the sensitive lips, sliding in Phasma’s wetness over her hungry, empty cunt. “I’m not abandoning you. I’m going to fill you with me,” and she does, pushing all four of her fingers into Phasma, pushing and holding deep inside, pressing on that tenderest spot and letting her knuckles stretch the opening. They rock together, completely connected, complete. 

Phasma is whispering a single word over and over: “Yes, yes, yes.”

Rey moves inside her, not the frantic pumping of a few moments before but slower and steady. It would be gentle if she weren’t using her entire hand, but Phasma can feel every movement so keenly, the sensation is so huge, that _gentle_ is a meaningless description.

“I need ...” Rey says, and stops as if she’s searching for words. She looks into Phasma’s eyes and places her hand flat on Phasma’s chest, between her breasts. “Can I?”

Phasma knots her brow, not understanding. 

“I need a little of your energy,” Rey says, low. Phasma doesn’t entirely know what that means but it’s clear Rey is asking to touch her in some new way, to draw something from her, and she nods. 

“Just tell me to stop if it feels wrong,” Rey says, and then her eyes flutter closed. 

Under Rey’s hand Phasma starts to feel something tingling and buzzing within her. It matches and meshes perfectly with the exquisite pressure between her legs. The effervescence spreads, and she feels it loosen and flow. It’s coming from her throat, her jaw, her heart, her breath, the space behind her eyes, and she is passing it into Rey, but it is not leaving her, not diminishing. 

Then she begins to feel Rey’s other hand, the one buried in her cunt and rocking deep inside her, warming and tingling just like the hand flat on her chest. That bubbling sensation spreads out and up through her gut, as if her own joy is flowing into Rey, through Rey, and back into herself through Rey’s other hand.

Her lips part, her mouth widens and curves, and she is laughing with ecstasy and relief as something that had been clenched inside her chest breaks apart. The flow of feeling becomes a wave, overwhelming and drenching her, and when it falls away she puts her hand over Rey’s to interrupt it.

She stills Rey’s other hand by clenching her thighs and whispers, “Pull out.” Rey does, slowly and expressively, lingering at the threshold of her body with her fingertips a moment before bringing her arm up to wrap around Phasma’s neck.

Phasma isn’t sure if what she just felt was an orgasm but she doesn’t care; she is alive and throbbing inside, from this mysterious energy and from being well and thoroughly fucked, and she is holding Rey. 

Rey, she realizes, is crying. Her eyes are still closed and she has a smile on her lips but she is crying, too. “What’s happening?” Phasma asks, stroking her hair. 

“I could feel you all through me and it was so ... good.”

Phasma smiles and kisses her gently, on her closed eyelids, on her still-flushed cheeks, on her lips. “It was.”

 

Phasma’s arrival on D’Qar is met with suspicion, fear, and nervous excitement. She fully expects to be imprisoned and interrogated, probably drugged and certainly tortured, and she is surprised and a little confused when it doesn’t happen that way. She’s interrogated, yes—they politely refer to it as being debriefed—and the security officers apologetically lock a metal tracking bracelet around her ankle. But all they do is ask questions and listen intently to the answers.

She gives them everything she can. Because she is methodical, organized, and observant, _everything she can_ is a lot. It is in her own interest. She is the most highly placed defector the First Order has ever lost, therefore a target, and the most valuable intelligence asset the Resistance has ever acquired, therefore treasured. Anything that increases the power of the Resistance increases her safety. The fact that it makes Rey so happy and that she herself enjoys, for the first time, the respect and comradeship of peers are merely bonuses. So she tells herself.

There are still days sometimes when she misses the predictability and clarity of her life in the Order, but that is all she misses. She hasn’t had to kill anyone since she left. She had never realized how it weighed on her, all the killing, until she no longer had to do it. She knows that sooner or later there will be a reckoning. In order to do the things she did, she had allowed parts of herself to freeze over. They are going to thaw, and she will have to revisit her history, and it will be agonizing.

But there is work, good work, in the meantime. General Organa asks her to give a talk on First Order infantry tactics to the senior command staff. She attacks the presentation with her ingrained attention to detail and clarity, and the talk turns into a series of briefings, and eventually she finds herself teaching a class for all officers-in-training. 

Not everyone on D’Qar embraces her. Of course not. She was until recently the enemy, and not just any enemy: a resolute, formidable, remorseless enemy who was responsible for more destruction and death than most of them can even comprehend. Someone more polished and charismatic could perhaps have eased the situation, but Phasma is painfully unpracticed in personal charm. She has spent her entire life protecting herself with an iciness that she can’t abruptly let go of, and even people who aren’t necessarily suspicious of her are intimidated by her. She feels conversations stop around her when she enters the mess hall. She doesn’t know what she could or should do about it; she has limited experience making other people comfortable with her, having never before felt any desire to do so. Finn is still jumpy whenever she’s in the room, and he probably always will be. She can’t blame him. 

But at the end of it all there is Rey. She doesn’t understand what drew Rey to her, though she is grateful to it. She doesn’t even fully understand what draws her to Rey. Her beauty, certainly, and her body—for the love of all the stars, her _body_ , and the easy and uncomplicated way she shares it with Phasma—but lust alone can’t explain what has happened to her. To them. 

The sex is indeed life-affirming and revelatory. The curiosity and inventiveness that mark Rey’s interactions with hyperspace drives and flight patterns extend to her explorations of Phasma. She wants Phasma in every possible position, every possible place: on her back, on her belly, on her knees, against the wall, over the desk. And she wants Phasma to take her in as many ways and as many places. She wants to be held down and lifted up, teased with one gentle finger and fucked with a strap-on the size of her arm. Phasma, for her part, is astonished to discover the daily shifts and changes in her own and her lover’s needs and desires. There are times when it is enough to spoon Rey from behind, cup Rey’s sex and pulse her fingers; there are times when she needs to bite, seize, devour, when she needs to leave the evidence of her teeth and nails on Rey’s body and Rey begs her to do it.

Still, their urgency for each other does not explain the thrumming power of their connection. Rey murmurs to her one night, as they both drift toward sleep, “I felt you, you know. So bright. On Starkiller Base.” It occurs to Phasma then that it might not be coincidence that her abrupt abandonment of the First Order came only hours after she first intersected with Rey. She wonders. But she never wonders, never doubts that what they have is real.

They don’t formally share quarters but they usually sleep together, and the intimacy of time spent simply _being_ , lying close in the vulnerable silence of the night, quickly becomes the most nourishing thing Phasma experiences. With Rey, she learns to love the dark. 

 

Phasma cannot understand the love affair that the Republic has with paper. In all of her years with the First Order she dealt with printed documents only three or four times, always in conditions of the highest secrecy when the eventual total destruction of a piece of information was critical. The only record that can be thoroughly obliterated, with no possibility of reproduction or dissemination, is the one that is never entered into a database. 

The Republic, though, and by extension the Resistance, joyfully and wantonly commits trivialities to paper. Phasma has even seen, to her mixed confusion and contempt, documents that were _written by hand_. When she comments on this to Rey, who is her interpreter of all things outside the First Order, Rey says, “Handwriting is personal. It’s intimate.” Phasma rolls her eyes—a gesture she has picked up alarmingly quickly from some of the children—and Rey adds, her amusement undisguised, “People like that, you know.”

“It is inefficient,” Phasma mutters.

“Not all of us are hooked into a giant neural net,” Rey answers. “In fact,” she drops her voice as if sharing a secret, “none of us are.” 

Phasma has to concede that point.

Still, when Rey comes into her quarters (Phasma continues to occupy her own quarters even after she is no longer locked there at night; it is extravagant of the Resistance to waste the space on her, she thinks, but the privacy is so sweet that she does not point this out) with a handful of paper, Phasma assumes some urgent secret is contained in it. Rey’s expression, a knot of anxiety, does nothing to contradict the conclusion.

“I don’t know if you’ll want this,” Rey begins. She is shifting awkwardly and looking not at Phasma but at the papers in her hand. “I think—but I don’t know. Anyway.” She takes a deep breath and looks up into Phasma’s eyes. “I took your serial number out of the records from your initial interrogation. We intercept a lot of data, I’m sure you know that, and most of the personnel files and things aren’t heavily encrypted, so when I ran your number through our database there was ... there was a lot. I didn’t read it, most of it,” she hastens to add, as if Phasma would be offended at her intrusion. She realizes that she probably ought to be, but it is a reaction she hasn’t developed yet. “But I found the records from your—impression, I guess they call it.” _Kidnapping,_ the Resistance would call it; Phasma notes Rey’s choice, and she is amused and touched by her delicacy. 

Rey is continuing, shifting the papers: “Then I cross-referenced those records with a starmap, and then census records and things from the planet, and I found ... well, this.” She holds out the last sheet of paper, and Phasma takes it, looking down at it with puzzlement at first and then a swell of yet another new, nameless emotion.

It is an amalgam of information on two people. There are a few census entries, a property deed, a marriage registration, snippets from personnel files. And there are names. Phasma touches the oldest census record, a single line of uninflected data, in which there is a three-year-old child registered living with the couple. In the next census, she is gone.

“This,” Rey points, “here.” She’s pointing at a birth registry.

Phasma swallows the alien letters. _Ceridwen Kendrick._ That is her, would have been her. She can’t even pronounce it. 

Rey says it, with a hard C and the accent on the second syllable. “I looked it up,” she says. “In legends, it’s the name of a sorceress who holds the secrets of knowledge and wisdom.”

Phasma half smiles. 

“He teaches music,” Rey says, breaking the silence. “She owns a bakery.” Phasma remains quiet, trying to understand what she’s learning. _A clear tenor voice. Warm, strong arms._ “They’re still alive, Phasma.”

Phasma flicks her eyes up to Rey’s, startled. This had been a fantasy of hers, of course, but her realistic, intellectual assessment of the possibilities suggested it was far-fetched. Given the First Order’s methods of recruitment, parents did not often survive the impression of their children. “How ...?”

Rey shakes her head. “I don’t know.” After a pause, she says, “You should ask them.”

Phasma takes a deep, involuntary breath, and she is suddenly dizzy. 

“The _Falcon_ is ready,” Rey says. “I got us clearance to go. Or,” she adds, doubt blooming as Phasma stands frozen, “if you need time, or you don’t want to ... I’m sorry, I didn’t think, but of course this is a big thing, a huge thing, and I’ve cornered you and it’s your decision, not mine, and—” 

Phasma cuts off her babble by grabbing her, lifting her slightly off her feet, and burying her face in her hair. “Thank you,” she says, indistinctly. She still has some trouble with expressing gratitude and the connection it connotes, but she feels it. “Thank you, love.” Another word that she usually has trouble with: this time it falls out without her conscious thought and she is immediately flooded with terror, or something like it, but Rey merely squeezes her a little harder and burrows the top of her head into her neck. 

Twelve hours later, they are settling into the _Millennium Falcon_. Phasma had insisted on finding someone to cover her class (“One tactical session, Phas, your students will be fine,” Rey had complained, but Phasma had fixed her with a steely look and the discussion had ended) and then spent almost two hours sparring with the training droids. Rey had watched her for a few minutes and been slightly afraid of the manic energy Phasma was flinging, but she had finally walked off to let Phasma drain her tension in her own way. When Phasma had returned to her quarters, bruised and exhausted, Rey had been waiting for her in her bunk, and they had drained their remaining tension Rey’s way. 

Now Phasma sits in the copilot’s seat. She is not really qualified to copilot, but neither of them had wanted to drag Chewbacca out of his planetside hibernation. Phasma almost fits into Chewie’s seat without adjusting it.

Rey watches her out of the corner of her eye as they go through their preflight check. Phasma is still keyed up, but she is calmer and surer. Rey is suddenly pierced by intense affection and pride, and a bittersweet shaft of longing.

 

A few hours later she waits at the gate as Phasma strides away from her up a stone walk toward a low flat-roofed house. Phasma squares herself to the door and knocks, then visibly makes her body relax out of the parade rest she had instinctively assumed. 

The door opens. It’s a man, his once-blond hair turning white, not as tall as Rey would have expected; Phasma has close to twenty centimeters on him. Rey could hear what they are saying if she chose, but she only watches. It is not her moment. 

The man steps, or stumbles, back, the amazement on his face visible even from where Rey stands. He grips the door, turns his head, calls urgently into the house, and a moment later a woman joins him. Rey half smiles: The woman is a hand taller than her husband, nearly as tall as Phasma. As their daughter. 

They all stand staring at each other, the man and woman clinging to each other and looking at Phasma with open-mouthed astonishment. Rey can see Phasma slowly stiffening into the military remoteness that takes her over when she doesn’t know what to say or do. Just Rey begins to consider joining her to break up the awkward stalemate, the couple draws Phasma into the house. 

The door falls shut. Rey looks fixedly at it for a few moments, then turns and leans against the gate, letting her eyes drift out into the dusty road. She had not thought about this part, the part where she would wait purposelessly while Phasma reintroduced herself to the people who were once her father and mother.

She slides down the fence, coming to a squat on her heels. She can always meditate. There is always work to be done exploring the vast and infinitesimal workings of the Force. 

What she actually does is nothing. She watches the lazy drift of dust and pollen through the air, feels the thick heat of the sun on her skin, takes in the sounds and smells of a lively, green, rich place. She can’t help imagining a little blonde girl running up and down the quiet road and the simple, untortured woman she might have become. She wonders if she would have loved that woman.

“Hey,” Phasma says from behind her. Rey twists her head and looks up; Phasma is vibrating with nervous tension but also smiling. She holds out her hand. “Come in with me,” she says, her voice catching. “I want you to meet them.” She adds, smiling even wider, “I want them to meet you.”

Rey takes her hand and lets Phasma pull her to her feet. About halfway up to the door Phasma stops abruptly, halting Rey as well. Bringing their joined hands to her lips, Phasma kisses Rey’s knuckles and says, her eyes on the stones of the walk, “I’m still yours.”

Rey pulls their hands down to her own mouth and says against the back of Phasma’s, “I know.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Search of a Remedy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11083974) by [nire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nire/pseuds/nire)




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